Whenever you install an app you're given the opportunity to see what "permissions" it uses. In the earlier days of Android this was done in a much more visible manner than it is now, but still today we have the chance to see just what we're getting into before we install apps. In yesterday's Android Guy Weekly we talked about becoming more educated and informed about the technology we use, and not being led blindly by, trusting in others to provide for our protection and well-being. Today we'll get into app permissions, what they are, how they work, and why they keep changing all the time. ...

I use Facebook to keep up-to-date with what's happening with my friends and what's new in the tech world. It's one source of many, but it's used by almost everyone, so it serves as a good place to watch for breaking news and trending topics. What I don't like is how unbearably slow the official Facebook app for Android is! Individual updates can take ten to thirty seconds -- and some bits of information don't load at all. It's a pain and they need to fix it. Until then, other developers have an opportunity, that's just what the creators of Fast Facebook (Beta) have done. Fast Facebook ...

If you want to publish an app in the Google Play Store (formerly known as the Android Market) you had to sign up, pay your dues, and you were good to go. But what if you wanted to later sell your app to someone else, or if you wanted to bring on more developers to help out? You were stuck with the account that you originally signed up under -- which was probably your own personal Gmail account. Yesterday Google loosened this up a little bit. Account owners can now invite others to share the account. To edit content, to upload new .APKs, and even view some of the financial data. New users ...

Just moments ago we let you know that Google's Android Market is being re-branded as the "Google Play Store". 1. Launch the Android Market 2. Update Google Music 3. When the update has been installed, go to your home screen 4. Pull down the notification shade and tap the Settings icon 5. Tap Apps 6. Go to Market under the "All" tab 7. Press "Clear Data" 8. Open Play Music (that's what the new Google Music is called) 9. Tap the Market icon in the bottom tray 10. Confirm the upgrade You'll be able to tell if you have the new "Market" by looking at the icon in the "Play Store" app. If it's ...

One of the benefits HTC builds into many of their devices is a feature that turns the screen off based on input from the phone's proximity sensor. Doing so helps save precious battery life and prevents accidental screen taps (no more "butt dialing"!). Additionally, HTC's implementation allows you to turn your smartphone face-down to not only turn off the screen, but silence your alerts as well. Great for meetings! Non-HTC phones probably don't have this feature. That frustrated one particular developer, and he decided to do something about it. His app is called Smart Screen Off, and it ...

If you've got an Android-powered tablet or smartphone and haven't been able to install the new Google Chrome Beta, you're in luck! XDA-Developer lenny_kano has put together an .apk that should let you run the browser on any device running on an ARM v7 or higher chip -- so long as you're also running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. If you are, and you'd like to try out Chrome Beta, head over to this thread on XDA-Developers, download the .apk, and side-load it onto your device. Enjoy! Source: XDA

Yesterday we told you about an update to Swype for Android that included support for Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. In addition to ICS support, the new version includes new language downloads and advanced language modeling. Today we caught it on film for you so you can see a few of the changes, and the long-awaited inclusion of Dragon Go! voice recognition -- all while running on the Galaxy Nexus powered by Android 4.0.3. If you'd like to get a copy of the latest Swype for Android, head over to beta.swype.com.

When Android was first released on the T-Mobile G1 it came with Google's Android Market built in. The Market wasn't the only way to get apps onto your smartphone, but it was the easiest way not only to install apps on your phone, but to find them as well. Since then many other app stores have surfaced. Some help developers distribute their apps in other countries, others are geared more towards the "adult" market, and still others that are simply alternatives to Google's Android Market. To date I've used Google's Android Market, Android Pit's App Center, and the Amazon Appstore. It's ...

In the United States, one of the biggest considerations when selecting a smartphone is what carrier works best in your area -- not which phone best suits your needs. It's unfortunate, but that's the state of cellular networks in the US today. What's the best way to know what carrier provides the best coverage for where you need to use it? After all, you'll need good coverage at home, at work, at school, and any other places that you frequent. Do you look at the coverage maps provided by the carrier that wants to sign you up for a two-year contract? Of course they're going to make their ...

Waze is one of my favorite navigation apps. It's available for both Android and iOS, and unlike other GPS Navigation apps, it learns. Based on your driving habits and patterns Waze figures out not only where you are, but where you're going -- and automatically routes you there! When you get get in your car and open the app in the morning, Waze asks you if you're going to work. At the end of the day Waze figures you're heading home and routes you accordingly. That's cool and all, but it's not where Waze really stands out. Waze not only learns from you, it learns from others who use the app: ...

PIMs and PDAs, and now smartphones and tablets are great at organizing our personal information and making our lives easier, but they tend to stop at contacts and calendars. What if there was a device that could make the leap from oganizing your personal information to controlling the world around you? With the Nest Learning Thermostat now you can! We spend about half our energy on heating and cooling. The guys at nest have put their computer and UI skills together to build a smart thermostat that you don't have to program -- it programs itself. It's got three thermometers, humidity ...

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Steve Jobs even quoted Picasso when he said "good artists copy, great artists steal." You can change the way your Android-powered smartphone or table looks by changing the wallpaper, or if you want even more customization you can install a custom launcher and matching apps. Such is the case with Skydroid, a Windows 8 Metro UI-inspired launcher and app suite that should be available in the next few months. This suite will likely have about twenty similarly themed apps: 1) Dialer 2) SMS 3) Email 4) Calendar 5) People with IM and Social 6) ...

SOPA, or the "Stop Online Piracy Act" and its sibling the Protect IP Act are pieces of legislation being considered by the US Congress. They sound like a good idea -- after all, who doesn't want to protect intellectual property and stop piracy, right? Unfortunately, if either (or both) get passed they will drastically change the internet as we know it -- and not for the better. I'm not going to go into the details about SOPA here, you can read a quick summary of how crazy SOPA is here. Internet companies, like GoDaddy, who announced support for SOPA felt a swift backlash from customers who ...

Google Wallet is an app that lets you use your NFC-enable Android-powered smartphone to make payments on compatible credit card terminals. Currently the only officially supported phone is the Sprint Nexus S 4G. Since both the GSM and Verizon of the Galaxy Nexus both have NFC chips in them, developers have been hard at work getting Google Wallet to run on the new flagship phones and not long ago we told you how to do just that. I've been using Google Wallet to buy my daily soda at the local convenience store for the past few weeks. I've never once had a problem and the convenience is very, ...

Firefox has long been a leading web browser in the desktop world. It's been only recently that Firefox has made its way onto mobile devices, first as Fennec, then as Firefox. Firefox for Android challenges the traditional mobile browser experience with a unique side-by-side layout. Hidden just off the left side of the screen are your "tabs", to the right you'll find your preferences, bookmarks, and a few navigation options. Some other notable features of Firefox 9 include Sync, which brings your desktop browser history, bookmarks, passwords, and open tabs from your desktop browser to your ...

We've told you about Google Wallet in the past, and even showed you how you could install it on your Nexus S or Galaxy Nexus. Unfortunately, the installation procedure to put it on the Galaxy Nexus was a bit more complicated than simply installing an app. And rightly so! Google Wallet is more than just a simple app. It has to tie (securely) into the NFC subsystem on the phone, and must be installed as a system application. After quite a bit of work by the tireless developers over at XDA, there is now a Google Wallet .APK which you can install on your Galaxy Nexus -- no root required! ...

Some have referred to the new Alfred app as "Pandora for the real world". With a recommendation like that, we couldn't help but take a look! Just in case you've been living under a rock (or don't have access to it in your corner of the world), Pandora is a streaming music service that asks you what kind of music you like, then comes up with related songs that you'll probably like using complex algorithms. When you run Alfred for the first time, he asks you a short series of questions. He uses your answers to make immediate suggestions about other places and has you rate them. This teaching ...

One of the things we like most about Android is the ability to replace your launcher with a custom app. Doing so can let you personalize and customize your smartphone in ways that aren't possible with your stock launcher. These customizations can include speed and performance improvements, animation options, and changes to the layout of your apps and widgets -- not to mention giving it an entirely new look and feel. Many of the existing launcher apps are based on the stock launcher's code, with modifications to enable highly coveted features. Such is the case with Nova Launcher for Ice ...

Plants vs. Zombies is arguably one of the best apps to help your kids prepare for the inevitable zombie apocalypse. Unlike zombie apps for grown-ups which teach defensive techniques using various weapons, Plants vs. Zombies teaches about barriers and strategy for avoiding direct confrontations with the undead. Unfortunately, Plants vs. Zombies hasn't been available through the Android Market, only through the Amazon Appstore (which has a significantly smaller reach). According to a post on their blog, Popcap had the following to say: "... we agree with you: It's about time already! Sheesh! ...

Yesterday we told you about a promo Google was running in the Android Market: 10-cent Featured Apps. What's Google celebrating? Ten Billion apps have been downloaded from the Market. Impressive! The promotion will reportedly run for a total of ten days, each day ten new apps will be offered for 10-cents. To see what apps you can get for 10-cents check out Google's 10 Billion Downloads timed promotions page. At the time of this writing that link is showing yesterday's deals. Today's deals a hidden in the Editor's Choice apps in the app version of the Market. Here are today's ten apps: 1. ...

We all talk to our smartphones, but we're usually talking to someone else using our smartphones -- not to the phones themselves. Android has let you input text and even send emails and texts, and dial phone calls using your voice for quite some time. Answering questions posed using natural language has been something no one has done particularly well -- not until Apple's Siri came out. Since then, everyone's been playing catch-up. Such is the case with Cluzee for Android, a new app that attempts to bring Siri-like functionality to Android. Similar to Siri, Cluzee let's you ask your phone ...

Google usually does a good job with their apps, but Google Catalogs leaves us scratching our heads a little. Available today for Android-powered tablets and the iPad, Google Catalogs brings paper catalogs from Nordstrom, Williams-Sonoma, Nike, and Sephora (plus 125 or so others) to your lap. What's interesting is the app brings not only magazine-style browsing, but YouTube videos and in-app purchasing as well. That's where we're confused. While we dig the idea of a richer shopping experience than many mobile websites currently don't offer, Google almost had the perfect e-Magazine reader ...

Google Wallet, like its name implies, attempts to replace your wallet -- well, the credit cards in it at least. On first glance, paying for purchases with your phone just sounds cool, though some could consider it to be more a gimmick than a ground-breaking, game changing app. Imagine being able to either hook up your existing credit card, or sign up for a pre-paid credit card through your online Google Wallet account (which recently replaced Google Checkout). The killer-app functionality comes from being able to show you your real-time account balance -- taking into account the ...

If your smartphone is running Android 2.2 Froyo or above and you'd like to get a taste of what the keyboard that will be coming in Ice Cream Sandwich is like, you're in luck! Using this app, anyone can try they keyboard out -- no root or custom ROM is required. Simply download and install the app, enable the keyboard in Language and keyboard settings, then select it as your Input Method. When I tried it out, I noticed that it's smaller than the multi-touch keyboard on the Droid RAZR but was every bit as usable. It even seemed a little faster. If you'd like to try it out, you can download a ...

Since the beginning, the biggest drawback to Google's Android OS was the lack of a full-featured music app. The old player would play music, but that was just about it. The iPhone's music player evolved from the iPod -- the industry leader in portable music players -- so it's no surprise that the music experience on iOS was better than that on Android. iOS also has iTunes, a complete experience for obtaining, organizing, and synchronizing your music library with your phone. Android didn't have anything remotely similar. Google's new music app was a huge improvement, but still lacked the ...